Search: self-defense
05 Sep When Treaties Supersede Statutes
Anyone familiar with foreign relations law hears the common refrain that treaties almost never supersede statutes under the last-in-time rule. Until recently, it was certainly my understanding that the ancient Supreme Court case of Cook v. United States was the only significant example in which a self-executing treaty trumped an earlier conflicting statute. But my recent research on the last-in-time rule indicates that there are several examples in which that rule has been applied to give effect to a self-executing treaty that conflicts with an earlier federal statute. In particular,...
17 Mar Imagining Gaza, Thinking Kosovo: The (De)similarities of UN Security Council Resolutions 2803 (2025) and 1244 (1999)
...the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) was tasked with ensuring the withdrawal of Yugoslav/Serb forces, monitoring the demilitarization of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), restoring order, and supporting the international civilian presence. Under Resolution 2803, ISF is charged with border security, civilian protection, demilitarization, and security-sector restructuring. Finally, both resolutions aim at political transition: Kosovo toward “substantial self-government,” followed by status settlement (Resolution 1244, para. 11 and annexes 1 and 2); Gaza toward a conditional roadmap for Palestinian self-determination and statehood (Resolution 2803, para. 2 and para. 19 of annex 1)....08 Jun All You Ever Wanted to Know About Non-Self-Executing Treaties…
lack of analysis of congressional-executive agreements. One of his most salient points is that our book argues for an international agreement-making process that is way too onerous to be practical or to fit within the Framer’s original understanding of the U.S. Constitution. I have some responses: 1) It’s not really that hard since many treaties today are non-self-executing; 2) the Framers envisioned at least some non-self-executing treaties could be made. In any event, it is not a long podcast and Marty’s thoughts on most questions is definitely worth listening to....29 Sep Kosovo, South Ossetia, and the Rhetoric of Self-Determination
I just wanted to note that I have posted to SSRN The Language of Law and the Practice of Politics: Great Powers and the Rhetoric of Self-Determination in the Cases of Kosovo and South Ossetia, which is part of the special issue of the Chicago Journal of International Law about great power politics to which Ken has referred a couple of times. Here’s the abstract: This Article, written for a special issue of the Chicago Journal of International Law concerning great power politics, seeks to elucidate whether and how international...15 Feb The Origins and Fall of Treaty Supremacy and Its Significance
...ruling that the Texas courts did not have to respect the international tribunal’s ruling because the treaty provision (UN Charter Article 94) was “non-self-executing.” In other words, the treaty itself did not merit Supremacy Clause effect in the face of “Contrary” state law, but required an implementing federal statute to have such effect. How can this be squared with the plain language of the Supremacy Clause, which does not distinguish between treaties or statutes in ordaining what is the “supreme Law of the Land”? David Sloss’s marvelous book The Death...17 Mar Is the CIA in the Drone Kill Chain? (Answer: Likely.)
...domestic constitutional issue. The more interesting question involves implied immunity under the self-defense paradigm when laws of war are not applicable (as noted in my 19 J. Trans. L. & Pol'y article in 2009). If targeting is permissible under the law of self-defense (in time of peace or in time of war), it appears that general patterns of practice and opinio juris regarding such practices support an implied immunity for lawful self-defense targetings (no known prosecutions, etc.). This should also inform the domestic constitutional issue. Kevin Jon Heller John, The...25 Nov So It Turns Out US Ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child Would Be Pointless
...the U.S. may be wary of binding itself to any treaty when it need not do so. This is not the only time the U.S. seems to stand alone as one of the world powers who isn't a party to a widely ratified treaty, the Vienna Convention and the Rome Statute come to mind. The whole “self-executing” business comes from the idea that an international treaty is not binding on U.S. domestic law unless either Congress has enacted statutes to implement it or it is self-executing. I’m no expert, but...27 Mar More Signs that Serbia is Giving Up on Kosovo: It Plans to Seek an ICJ Opinion
...ground. My current thinking on this is as follows: (1) This remedial type of self-determination must necessarily encompass a limiting temporal element. In other words, after some undefined period of time passes after the end of the HR or SD abuses, the affected people's right to external self-determination would lapse, and revert to the regular right of internal self-determination. This is because practically every multi-ethnic state in the world has undergone times of internecine violence, and they would all unravel if suddenly every group that has been persecuted throughout history...03 Jun Michael Stokes Paulsen on the Constitution and International Law
...Pres. Carter unilaterally revoked the Mutual Defense Treaty with Taiwan, and the Supreme Court declined to review this action on non-justiciability grounds. But the MDT was almost certainly a non-self-executing treaty -- there were no private rights of action under it (even for Sen. Goldwater), so Pres. Carter's revocation didn't have any effect on domestic law. Brian Has the US ratified any self-executing treaties without including a declaration/reservation to the effect that the treaty provisions are non-self-executing with respect to US domestic law? Brian ...I ask this question because my...22 Oct The Military Intervention in Rio de Janeiro and Human Rights
...sufficiently intense protracted armed violence and organized armed groups, however, the applicable rules for the Rio operation is international human rights law. These standards, reflected in the United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials and the case-law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, require lethal force to be a measure of last resort, only to be used in cases involving self-defense or the defense of others against a threat of death or serious injury – a standard known as “absolute necessity”....